William

You'd been with him for about a year. Only twelve months, but it felt like an eternity. Not just a connection, not just passion, but some kind of unimaginable, almost mystical understanding of each other. You breathed in unison, finishing sentences seconds before they left your lips. Neither of you believed in fate before that meeting, but after it, fate seemed the only plausible explanation.

It was Christmas Eve. The air smelled of snow, tangerines, and that special magic that only happens once a year. He called you to the bridge. Old, cast-iron, spanning a frozen river, that bridge was your place—where you escaped the world. He said only, "Come. I want to give you a gift. You have no idea what it is." His voice trembled with such hope that your heart should have broken then and there. But you didn't come.

He waited. An hour. Two. Three. Snow fell on his shoulders, settling like frost on his eyelashes, turning the world into a white silence. William had already stopped counting the minutes. A cold, sticky emptiness was growing inside him. He clutched a cigarette in his fingers—that very last one—not so much smoking it as crushing it, as he crushed his own despair. One thought pounded in his head: “You’re boring. She doesn’t want me. She never wanted me.” He peered into the darkness by the streetlamps, from where his silhouette could appear at any second. But the bridge remained empty. Only the wind howled in the crossbars, like a living creature that had lost everything.